Over the past few months, I have learned a few classroom management strategies that I have found very useful to my teaching. I have also encountered some ineffective classroom management strategies.
Prevention
For starters, if the lesson isn't interesting, I can guarantee that there will be classroom management issues. I've noticed in the middle school that student engagement was crucial to encouraging positive behavior. Students did not like to be talked to about science, but rather, enjoyed a discussion of science. Soliciting their feedback on concepts and ideas is a good way to ensure that they are paying attention and not starting a paper airplane war in the back of the class. In order to succeed at this, the lesson needed to be relevant to them or at least connected to them in some way (a lot of times this is easier said than done.) It is also in the nature of the adolescent to want to move around, so I incorporated a few activities in which they got to do that. It gave them time to stretch their legs and socialize, which is very much appreciated in middle school as well as high school.
Intervention Like anything though, bad classroom behavior is bound to occur, and it might not have anything to do with your lesson. It might have to do with something that happened that morning in another class or something totally unrelated to school. The key here is to create as little disturbance as possible. Steps that I chose to use for intervention were:
1.) Eye contact - I let the student know I was aware of their behavior and it was consider a warning for them to stop.
2.) Proximity - If the issue continued I would move closer to the student or students to signal that I did not appreciate them interrupting the lesson.
3.) Warning - If the behavior continued, I wrote their name on the board. This usually met with pleas of their innocence, but was usually enough to curb any further disturbance with minor disruption to the lesson.
4.) Lunch Detention - The second warning earned a check next to the student name, which signaled lunch detention for the next day.
5.) After-school Detention - This very rarely occurred, when a student was completely out of control, I would have them come after-school so that we may discuss the issue further.
If the student received any sort of detention, I would make them write me an apology letter as to why I asked them to come come, and what they could do better the next time.
These behavior strategies, have proved very useful in the middle school level. I have not yet any any classroom management issues at the high school level. I think I would approach it in the same fashion, perhaps without writing their name on the board, but rather slipping them a note to let them know of the warning. I think my biggest classroom management issue that I would have would be implementing discipline at the high school level.
Prevention
For starters, if the lesson isn't interesting, I can guarantee that there will be classroom management issues. I've noticed in the middle school that student engagement was crucial to encouraging positive behavior. Students did not like to be talked to about science, but rather, enjoyed a discussion of science. Soliciting their feedback on concepts and ideas is a good way to ensure that they are paying attention and not starting a paper airplane war in the back of the class. In order to succeed at this, the lesson needed to be relevant to them or at least connected to them in some way (a lot of times this is easier said than done.) It is also in the nature of the adolescent to want to move around, so I incorporated a few activities in which they got to do that. It gave them time to stretch their legs and socialize, which is very much appreciated in middle school as well as high school.
Intervention
Like anything though, bad classroom behavior is bound to occur, and it might not have anything to do with your lesson. It might have to do with something that happened that morning in another class or something totally unrelated to school. The key here is to create as little disturbance as possible. Steps that I chose to use for intervention were:
1.) Eye contact - I let the student know I was aware of their behavior and it was consider a warning for them to stop.
2.) Proximity - If the issue continued I would move closer to the student or students to signal that I did not appreciate them interrupting the lesson.
3.) Warning - If the behavior continued, I wrote their name on the board. This usually met with pleas of their innocence, but was usually enough to curb any further disturbance with minor disruption to the lesson.
4.) Lunch Detention - The second warning earned a check next to the student name, which signaled lunch detention for the next day.
5.) After-school Detention - This very rarely occurred, when a student was completely out of control, I would have them come after-school so that we may discuss the issue further.
If the student received any sort of detention, I would make them write me an apology letter as to why I asked them to come come, and what they could do better the next time.
These behavior strategies, have proved very useful in the middle school level. I have not yet any any classroom management issues at the high school level. I think I would approach it in the same fashion, perhaps without writing their name on the board, but rather slipping them a note to let them know of the warning. I think my biggest classroom management issue that I would have would be implementing discipline at the high school level.